In-Depth Conversations that Ought to Occur When Effed-Up Movies End
by justshortof
Summary: They hadn't realized it would be this hard, now that they had to stop surviving and start living again; a series of non-chronological, often disconnected nights, moments, and grand mental soliloquies in which those who are still alive attempt to go on without those who aren't.
1. I

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 _Emma_

They go driving a lot anymore—out old, torn-up roads that Emma, even living here her whole life, has never noticed. Somehow, Kieran—being the poetic, close-to-nature, introvert type that he is—has found them within a few months of moving to Lakewood. And, maybe, it's true that there's something to being alone out in the middle of nowhere—something about the open sky and the dark, blending trees and the scintillating balls of fire that are trillions of miles away and still right here. It makes you think that things ought to be a whole lot simpler than they are—and maybe, it wouldn't be so hard to make them that way.

Or, maybe, going to six funerals in the past two months has made her the poetic, close-to-nature, introvert type.

Right now, the sky is the color of a resistant bruise—that weird blue-black that only lasts for twenty minutes, right before it gets dark out. She used to hate driving at this time, with the sky feeling so heavy and the night smothering the day underneath it. It made you feel like something bad could happen.

But then she watched Will get shredded in half at three o'clock on a sunny afternoon, and she stopped hating any certain times and any certain skies.

Emma told her shrink that she'd thought the night terrors and hallucinations would go away, now that Piper was dead; she said that she didn't understand why it was just getting worse. The truth, though, was that she _did_ understand. Emma only said that because she didn't know what else to say, and she knew that that would get Dr. Wagner talking about shock and trauma and psychological healing. The truth was, Emma knew that things were going to start hurting more, and she'd known from that night on the dock, when she'd stared at Piper's blood splattered over the wooden planks and thought, _But it's too late. It's too late for so many people._

"Carjacker at five," the radio sputters, and Kieran turns up the static.

He listens to the scanner all the time now, even more than he used to, even more than when there was a killer on the loose. That would probably make a good joke if Kieran's dad hadn't been murdered on duty three weeks ago—if murderers and literally spilled guts and orphaned seventeen year-old boys were funny.

Emma hates the scanner, but she's never been able to ask him to turn it off.

"I called that Detective Brock Lady a slut over the phone this morning," Kieran sighs. He's been telling her about a lot of people that he's wrongfully snapped at lately, usually all choked-up and sorry about it. This time, though, Kieran just sounds tired. "She called to ask if I needed anything. She's been in California or something. She just heard about my dad."

"You're grieving. She knows that."

"Yeah."

"But she _was_ sort of a slut."

Emma had meant to laugh or snort or something when she said it, but instead, the words come out completely deadpanned. She feels like that's been happening a lot lately.

Kieran understands, though. He looks like he's trying to laugh or snort or something too, but then he just says, "Yeah."

 _Noah_

He'd been expecting some distance from Audrey—not the bad kind or anything, just the "I shot the psycho who killed eight kids, one of which was my girlfriend, and I don't feel like talking about it" kind of distance. It's not like it's unfair of her to be an abnormally private person. There's probably never been a study, but Noah's willing to bet that, statistically speaking, of all the bi-curious, atheist daughters of preachers with distant, ailing mothers in the world, most of them are probably abnormally private people.

Audrey was abnormally private when she and Emma stopped talking, and she was abnormally private when her mom started seeing more doctors, and she was freaking abnormally private when she watched the ending of _The Sixth Sense_ for the first time—(and really didn't end up ever talking in depth with him about it, even after she got over it, which really drove him crazy).

Anyway, the weird thing is that, these days, Audrey is spending more time with him than she ever has, not just in the wake of fucked-up shit happening—but, maybe, just, like, on a regular basis. She's offering to pick him up in the mornings, even though he lives at least fifteen minutes out of her way and has a car with way better gas mileage than hers. She's stopping in at the shop, bearing coffees and croissants. She's laughing at every joke he makes, and when she's around him, her eyes never get distant anymore, like she's somewhere else, thinking about somebody else.

There's really nothing Noah can compare it to, except to say that Audrey's acting like every day is the day after Riley died, treating him like, of all the people in this wilting, mourning, fucked-up town, _he's_ the one most likely to slump under all the pain—the boy who lost his probably-soon-to-be-girlfriend-and-virginity-receiver.

—or maybe, it's not that at all. Maybe, she looks at Emma, the other person she cares about a little bit more than most people, and thinks that it's far too late for her. Him, though—she probably looks at him and sees a little more hope, a little less damage, a little greater chance of restoration.

It's awful to be like this—to think like it—he knows, but he sort of hates her for that sometimes. (Maybe, hate is a strong word, and then again, maybe it's not. Maybe, it's perfectly fine to sometimes hate someone you love and absolutely, 100% can't live without.) The thing is, all this time, he thought she was being selfless—giving up her abnormally private set of defense mechanisms to be there for him, as a real friend. Which she is, really.

Except, maybe, she just can't stand the idea of him not being _him_ anymore—not being clumsy, light-hearted, class clown, kid genius Noah Foster. Maybe, if he's really digging deep—really aiming low—she can't stand the idea of, for once in their goddamn friendship, him being the abnormally private one.

And, sometimes, he wants to tell her that what she's doing is bullshit—the total, utter, and undeniable kind, even though everything about everything is so fucked up in his head right now, to the point that Audrey could tell him _she_ killed Riley, and he still wouldn't know how to feel, whether to hug her or hate her.

But here's the truth about something, whether it applies to them or not:

You can't just shove the light back into someone else's eyes, because you, yourself, are afraid of the dark. That's not fair. Life doesn't work that way. Everybody talks about the ending of _The Sixth Sense_ fucking when—and _if_ —they feel like it, and Audrey ought to know that better than anybody.

 _Jake_

The farm was always full of weeds and dust and shit—Jake knows that. Mr. Belmont only mowed like once a month, and nobody dusts off barns, not even all-American-housewives like Mrs. Belmont. In reality, Will's place was always old and left-behind-looking. It was an out-of-the-way farm in a small off-of-the-grid town. In all of its existence, it had probably never looked new, not even when it was new. Still, Jake can't help but walk around that property—through the spider-webbed doorways in the barn and between the chipped, rusted machines out back—and hate it for looking this old, this forgotten, as if it's been years since Will lived here.

That's how it is sometimes, anyway.

Other times, Jake can't spend more than a few minutes out there. Other times, he looks at those old and rusted machines and remembers that they're new and sharp enough to cut through bone.

…

At first, Jake thought that maybe they weren't getting rid of the saw—the saw—for official, crime-scene-reasons, and then, when it became clear that that wasn't the case, he thought that maybe the Belmonts were going a little batty, getting a little morbid. Why else do you keep something like that around, especially if you're an all-American husband caring for your faint, grieving all-American housewife?

The truth, Jake's starting to think, is that they're just tired. Right now, they have no intentions of looking at that thing ever again, no intentions of going out back behind the barn ever again—no intentions of seeing their only son ever again. The truth is, it doesn't really matter how much faith and strength you've got—how all-American you are—because, when you lose somebody like that, you lose everything.

…

Jake's pretty sure he's the only one that goes out back, out where it happened. He's been helping Will's parents out around the farm for weeks now, and the entire time, that back part of the yard has stayed eternally still and silent. The weeds are worse there. And there's a huge pile of stacked, split wood—gone rubbery in the rain by now, though it clearly was, at one point, intended for firewood.

Mrs. Belmont—Maria, he's allowed to call her now, even though she's always been Mrs. Belmont, all these years—had tried to say something about it once, Jake thinks, had tried to tell him that he didn't have to be going out there. Jake had offered to lug some garbage out to the burn pile—had been in the doorway, the slim one connecting the kitchen to the garage, awkwardly trying to slide through sideways with the garbage bag at his shins, when she'd gone, "Jake, Honey, you don't—I mean, Harvey can start a new burn pile, out by the apples trees."

In that moment, Maria's eyes were wet, and her voice was choked-up. It was the moment where Jake was supposed to say something—the moment they should have held each other and cried over a son and a best friend and a strength-less, faith-less all-American life left to live. It was the first time—and, since then, the only time—that he'd known for sure that Maria was willing to think about Will.

And Jake's not sure why, but instead, he just shoved the garbage through the door and said, "Nah, it's okay."

He just left her there, in that old, rusted, spider-webby, forgotten kitchen—just dragged the garbage out to the old burn pile, and looked at the saw—the saw—and thought that somebody would deal with it someday, at some point, probably.


	2. II

_Brooke_

She's been sleeping with Jake a lot, ever since the murders. She's been loving him, too, but that is kind of beside the matter.

At first, it was meaningful sex, and then, for a while, it was just fucking—and now, it's somewhere in between. The whole time, she loved him. That was never a question. The thing, Brooke's starting to realize, is that you really screw yourself—your psyche, and your sexuality, and all that shit—over when you start having wild, passionate, illegal sex with your thirty year-old English teacher, all as a means of escaping your grossly unhealthy mental and emotional state.

Yeah, that shit really messes you up.

The first time she slept with Jake, it was soft and sweet—all tiny, little murmurs: _I've got you, I'm here, We're alive._ They made love like in old movies, back before anyone wanted to experiment with anything but happy endings.

Then all the other colors—the ones that weren't black and white—started to flood in, and things changed. She could feel herself being emptied out inside, could feel her body revolting against the murmurs, the I love you's, the happy endings. There were nights when she thought of Seth, his animal-like sounds and the spidery veins in his wrists, the bulge of his muscles, the instinctive want in his eyes. She thought of the way he said "goddamn" the night it all ended—how he was so goddamn happy to see her. She thought of what it was like to love somebody—or even to _think_ you love somebody—when people were dying all around you.

(A hint: it's easier.)

…

 _Audrey_

She talked to this girl for a while—this girl, Miriam, who wore baggy, thrift shop sweaters and pulled her socks down over her boots. Audrey couldn't quite tell if her old-lady name was a result of her parents' own vintage tastes or if Miriam had just been stuck with it and decided that there was no other way to pull off a name like that—no other way but to wear baggy, thrift shop sweaters and pull socks down over your boots.

Miriam was one of those people who was so hipster, she hated hipsters. She'd run her hand through her hair a lot, nervously, like Kristen Stewart, and she didn't text good-nights or good-mornings or anything like that. She stuttered sometimes when she talked and read graphic novels, because "God, not everything in this world has to be so fucking poetic all the time, you know?"

This girl _made sure_ that she wasn't fake.

Audrey talked to her for a little bit, mostly because there was this numbness growing increasingly powerful inside of her—this numbness that might have started when Mrs. Murray told her that Rachel was hanging from a ceiling fan but also might have started when Mrs. Murray told her that it would really do her some good to start going back to church again, with her father. Audrey talked to Miriam like you talk to someone when there's literally a negative percent chance that you'll know them in two years—but when their lips, just like any lips, will probably feel nice whenever it comes time to stop thinking.

Audrey knew that that wasn't the way that Miriams ought to be talked to. (They were special, _real._ They were the girls you fell in love with.) Audrey knew that, but she didn't care.

See, the only time Miriam had ever been out of character was the first time that they met, down at some old coffee shop in the Square. Audrey hadn't had intentions of stopping in, but the air outside was so cold, it was dry, and she felt like if she walked a few more blocks to The Lounge, where Emma might be working, her sinuses would crumble up, and her head would concave, and there'd be a weirdass story about how a girl who'd looked into the eyes of the Lakewood Killer had been the first human case of death by global warming.

So, she stopped for coffee and met Vintage Miriam.

Actually, first she met Anna From Minnesota, who was visiting a college upstate but just _had_ to travel through Lakewood. Anna was alright. She was that kind of person who is so simple and child-like that, once you've experienced any form of loss or sorrow in your life, you can never truly connect with again—but that was okay. She was okay. All she wanted was a picture with one of the Lakewood Six. All she wanted was a picture with a tremendously, incomprehensibly fucked-up individual.

And, honestly, Audrey was so numb, and the air was so dry, and eight kids were so dead that she didn't care about the morbidity of it all. She was just happy Anna didn't understand. She was just happy Anna was getting her picture.

After that, Miriam sat down—Miriam, who pulled socks down over her boots, and played a little bit of piano but couldn't sing, and wasn't sure how she felt about labeling her sexuality, and liked the idea of falling in love with a broken-up, small town celebrity.

And she didn't mention Anna or the picture or the murders. She just said: "You should try the Chai. It's good at clearing out your head."

But if she'd really understood—if Real, Authentic, Vintage Miriam was truly the non-hipster, painfully real human she wanted to be, who knew pain and loss and numbness—she would have never sat down.

…

 _Kieran_

"Do you ever hate me for it? Like, even if you know it doesn't make sense to, do you ever look at me and just …"

She's watching the ceiling, her eyes glazed over—but not in the way they get right before she has a panic attack. Her chest is lax and loose, her hands folded up softly; it's just her eyes, and they're not weak, they're just empty.

"Just what?" His own voice is so soft, he can't feel it.

"I don't know. Just … want to look away?"

"No," he lies. Then, to even it out with some truth, he says, "None of it is your fault."

In his head, he thinks of what he would say if he was somebody else:

 _Of course, Emma—of course, I want to look away sometimes. Of course, I hate that you went off to your fucking retreat, and dealt with all your fucking guilt, while the rest of us just stayed behind with the damage—because, after all, that's all that we were: collateral damage in your horror story. Long live the Survivor Girl._

But he's not like that, not now anyway, not while she's here with her loose chest and soft hands and glazed-over eyes—not when she's surviving just like him, little by little. Is it hard to look at her? He doesn't know; he's not sure; he just does it, is doing it right now. And that's all he can speak for anymore is right now.


End file.
